At womenintechnology.co.uk we often get asked to participate in new research or comment on particular issues. I was recently contacted by Forrester who were putting together a report on diversity in IT. As a thank you for putting them in touch with the womenintechnology network, they have offered us access to free copies of the report. It is US focused, and you’ll have to register, but it’s a quick (and free!) process and it’s an interesting read that reinforces many of the things that we have been saying.

I especially liked the idea of changing the language of job descriptions to attract more women, and to use more competency based interviewing, which allows interviewees to highlight their soft skills and give examples of how they have tackled a particular situation (allowing employers to separate those who really can walk the walk from those who can just talk the talk.) Both these things would help female candidates who are generally not as good as men at selling their skills and abilities.

To read more, download your free copy of the “Fostering A More Diverse Infrastructure And Operations Department” here: www.forrester.com/womenintechnology.

Esta mañana ha sido un auténtico desastre, reunión inexcusable, 4 evento por delante y acabo de llegar a casa… un sofocón de día!
Gracias a los amigos de ReadWriteWebm en especial a Miguel Galera, Director General podemos tener un resumen del evento.

Trasmitimos…
“En el evento celebrado esta mañana por la Mobile Marketing Association, Telefónica y la empresa de investigación Forrester Research, Thomas Husson, Analista Senior de esta última, ha desvelado las claves del futuro del marketing para dispositivos móviles. ReadWriteWeb España acudió a la cita, y en el siguiente artículo presentamos un repaso de los puntos más interesantes de la charla de Husson: por qué es importante el marketing móvil, en qué punto nos encontramos dentro de su desarrollo, cuáles serán sus usos destacados y cómo beneficiarán a empresas y usuarios.

En conclusión podemos decir que la charla supuso un vistazo a todo un mundo de posibilidades. El marketing móvil es una oportunidad para empresas y comerciantes de encontrar nuevas vías de marketing dinámicas y personalizadas, y para los usuarios supone un mundo nuevo de servicios y posibilidades para el uso de la tecnología móvil. Los lectores pueden descargar la presentación aquí.
“

A couple months ago, Gartner released their annual ECM Magic Quadrant (which I looked at).  Sure enough, being an odd year, Forrester released their ECM Wave.  I see the pros of waiting two years as the larger vendors take that long, or longer, for a significant release.  On the other hand, you have longer to wait for new members to show up.

Well not in Forrester’s world.  Only one new vendor (HP) was added and a few were cut, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

The 2009 Wave

Thanks to Oracle (again), you can look at the Q4 2009Forrester Wave for ECM Suites in detail. For those with less patience, here is a copy of the wave…

Before we talk about the individual vendors, let’s talk about the low number of vendors.  If you look at the 2007 report, many vendors are gone. A couple were acquired (Interwoven and Vignette) and some aren’t what I would call ECM (SAP and Xerox) vendors anyway.

The question is, where is Autonomy?  They bought Interwoven and weren’t new to the content space.  They aren’t mentioned anywhere.  Nuxeo got a mention as one of the two open-source vendors in the "reduced footprint" category.  The SaaS focused SpringCM (under "reduced footprint") and emerging Laserfiche (under "process-focused" and "SMB") both got a nod as well.

All of those got placed on the Quadrant, as did SAP and Xerox.  I wouldn’t be upset, except I like how Forrester structures the wave more than Gartner’s MQ.  I want to see more vendors in here.

Breaking it Down

Let’s look at some of the vendors…

• Alfresco: Forrester thinks they are losing ground.  They didn’t say as much, but last time they were on the verge of making the Strong Contender  classification.  Now they are just strongly a Contender.  I understand raising the bar as the market evolves, but Alfresco hasn’t been sitting on its laurels.  They lost a lot ground in Strategy according to Forrester. As for the Current Offering, looks like the increased focus on integration in this Wave hurt Alfresco.
• HP: Welcome to the Wave.  Still the only major vendor that I haven’t heard connected to CMIS in any way.  I’ve even heard that Hyland is working on it.  Forrester has noticed and made note.
• Microsoft: Love the realism.  There are gaps, but less this time around than two years ago.  Microsoft  has a vision.  When 2010 comes out, they should push their way into the Leaders.
• Open Text: Getting hit on their Strategy.  Constant acquisition of the competition can do that.  Getting things integrated, as always, remains their biggest hurdle.
• EMC: Not much to say, except they got dinged for their poor WCM.  This is a growing trend.
• IBM/Oracle: Feel the love, especially with IBM.

To be honest, nothing surprising, just reinforcing.  I like how Forrester has the Leaders spread a little and how getting closer to the upper-right corner is rewarded.  You need a strong Strategy and solid Offering to get rated well.  Market Presence is measured by the size of the dot.  It just makes a lot more sense to me.

You know what is missing this year?  The score weighting.  Smart move as I trashed it last year and it gives people something extra when they pay for the full details.

Overall, the scoring had nothing massively off, though I’m not sure why Alfresco took so many hits.  The next couple of years is going to be critical for Alfresco as they start to hit middle-age and strive to be more.

Dans un rapport  paru cette semaine, l’institut Forrester suggère de remplacer le terme de ‘Brand Manager’ en ‘ Brand Advocate’ et plus fondamentalement, de changer l’organisation marketing au sein des entreprises.

Le nouveau ‘Brand Advocate’ doit s’adapter à la nouvelle complexité du paysage marketing, avec les réseaux sociaux, la fragmentation des medias et la foule de données accessibles en ligne. Fini les plans annuels, le marketing se vit en temps réel.

Dans Internet a tout changé, nous prenons notamment l’exemple de Adidas et son agence TBWA qui se sont organisés en temps réel.

Voici un extrait :

Non seulement le consommateur, après des heures
de recherche en ligne, sait quel produit il veut, mais
en plus il le veut tout de suite.

Or bien des entreprises sont encore calées sur des plannings
de « campagnes ».

Ce n’est plus tenable. Les médias du temps réel (blogs,
sites media, twitter, les pages personnelles des réseaux
communautaires, les fils RSS, les fils d’information sur les
chaînes d’information,…) se réactualisent en continu, supplantant
du même coup les médias au rythme de production
plus long.

La suite est à lire en page 84…

Et le rapport de Forrester s’intitule : Adaptive  Brand Marketing : Rethinking Your Approach to Branding in Digital Age.

Ahora que vamos llegando al final de un año complejo quiero compartir con ustedes algunas cifras interesantes sobre mercadeo y estrategia digital que he estado leyendo y escuchando y que no sirven sino para reforzar el punto… Digital y alternativo es el camino.

Según un estudio cualitativo realizado por HubSpot a un grupo de PYMES , el costo por lead generado a través de la implementación de tácticas de inbound marketing es 61% más bajo que el de un lead obtenido usando táctica tradicional, adicionalmente esa misma audiencia afirmo que están invirtiendo hasta un 37% de su presupuesto en inbound marketing y también que han incrementado en 180% sus esfuerzos en desarrollar blogs y presencia en redes sociales y 36% en SEO y SEM cuando se les compara con empresas grandes logrando con esto los siguientes resultados:

Generación de leads con estrategia y táctica tradicional:

8% de los leads provienen de ferias y expos

7% por correo directo tradicional

9% por telemercadeo

Total de leads generados: 24% con outbound marketing (tradicional)

Leads generados con inbound marketing (digital)

16% por SEO

14% por email marketing

8% por redes sociales

13% por campañas de PPC

Total de leads generados: 51% de los leads

Con respecto a la redes sociales, para aquellos que aún piensan que esto es una moda, Comscore predice que este año cerrara con poco más de 629MM de usuarios en las distintas redes sociales y que habrá 1 Billón de usuarios para el 2012, también hemos ido descubriendo que los blogs forman parte integral de cualquier estrategia de inbound marketing y en muchos casos son incluso más efectivos que la presencia en redes sociales para obtener resultados y conversión.

Mashable.com sostiene que el mercadeo en móviles está siendo potenciado y debe su crecimiento reciente a las sinergias que se han ido logrando entre este y las redes sociales a través de las aplicaciones desarrolladas para ambos.

Por su lado Forrester Research  nos anuncia que un 27% de los usuarios de redes o medios sociales hacen uso de las aplicaciones para estas  lo que refuerza todo lo anterior.

Para cerrar complemento diciendo que America representa 10% del total de usuarios de internet en el mundo que ya está por 1.3 billones… Nada desestimable… Por cierto, lo más interesante de todo esto es que no importa si su estrategia y negocio es B to B o B to C, la efectividad es prácticamente igual.

Ahí me cuentan… Saludos!!!

Lately I have been reading a lot of articles complaining about the amount of Social Media websites available in 2009. It made me sit down and count the many dozen of accounts I have set up in the past few years.

At the moment I spend most of my time on my Facebook account, my Twitter account, my Hyves, my YouTube account and of course Skype & MSN. These are the account I check at least ones a day.

Besides those main ones, I follow blogs through Google Reader; have a MySpace account lying around somewhere, and a Linkin account. I post photos on my Flickr and my Photobucket account, linking interesting links to my del.icio.us. account.

Other accounts include, (yes there are more) my Cu2, Habbo, Hilversums.nu, Sugababes/Superdudes, Picturetrail and my MSNLive account.

Looking at the picture below, you can see I only have subscription to a small amount of the social media sites are available on this web. I’m not saying everybody is as “networked out” as I am, but when is it going to be too much?

Sources: http://www.wealthyleader.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/social_media_sites.jpg

A recent report from media analysts Jeremiah Owyang from Forrester was published about the future of the social media and the social web. Owyang explains the current and future state of all these different kind of social media sites that we use.  He explains that the social media eras are split up in the following five generations:

• The era of social relationships (2003 – 2007): People are connected through simple-developed social media websites.
• The era of social functionality (2007 – 2012): On top of these social networks and communities, the social applications are being developed, but people are still excluded into one network.
• The era of social colonization (start 2009): Forrester says that end 2009; people can connect their social identities through different social networks and communities.
• The era of social context (start 2010): People and their network will become recognizable, through their personal social identities and needs.
• The era of social commerce (start 2011): In this phase communities will become more powerful then corporate websites and commerce platforms.

These eras are explained in the following diagram

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremiah_owyang/3478168483/

Looking at these different era’s, I think we are still in the era of social relationships. I am still connected to many different social websites, which are not linked in any kind of way. This is very chaotic and unorganized. Hopefully soon kind of era of social colonization will be developed, so we can socialize in different ways but still with one main function. All of all, we can agree the amount of social media sites now a days is overwhelming!

Following is a video about the Social Media Revolution, which was showed to me at school which really shows the impact on this media type in the world.

What do you guys think?

Nach einer Forrester-Umfrage sind in den USA und Kanada 20 Prozent bereit, für Inhalte von Zeitungen und Zeitschriften im Internet zu zahlen (siehe Grafik unten). Zur Methodik wird nur verraten, dass es sich um eine Mail-Umfrage bei rund 4.700 Probanden handele. Hoffentlich erfahren die Bezieher einer 500 Dollar teuren Langfassung Näheres.

Der Anteil von 20 Prozent Zahlungswilligen liegt recht nahe bei den 16 Prozent, die Forsa kürzlich im BITKOM-Auftrag in Deutschland fand. Für Qualitätsjournalismus fernab des Boulevards und der knallharten Ratgeber für Rabattfüchse aller Art ist auch in der alten Holzmedienwelt das Potenzial nicht viel größer zu veranschlagen.

Die Boston Consulting Group bietet dennoch mehr. Sie versucht via Pressemeldung Beratungskunden mit der Verheißung von 50 Prozent (!) Zahlungswilligen anzulocken. Eine Online-Befragung bei 5.000 Probanden in neun Ländern, darunter auch Deutschland, habe ergeben, dass ungefähr jeder Zweite zahlungsbereit sei – allerdings nur mit monatlichen Beträgen zwischen durchschnittlich 3 Dollar in den USA und 7 Dollar in Italien. Es fehlt jeder Hinweis auf die Repräsentativität der “Studie”, die in diesem Fall noch nicht mal bestellt werden kann. Interessenten können nur bei BCG anrufen. Vor zwei, drei Jahren sprachen fast alle Consultants von Werbung, heute schwenken fast alle auf Paid Content um. Und morgen?

Toyota’s use of social media to support the launch of the iQ was covered by Forrester Research as a case study, and so it was that Head of Digital Simon, along with three hundred-odd marketers, struggled through what felt like gale force winds to the Park Plaza Riverbank Hotel, in not-quite-Westminster-but-ooh-look-there’s-Big-Ben for Forrester’s Marketing Forum EMEA 2009 earlier this week. Simon had a slot to present the case-study on day 2. I hung around playing blogger-on-the-wall for good measure.

Most of the Forum took place at least two floors below ground. Cue tweets complaining that the lack of mobile reception prevented them from tweeting. (1. How did you manage to tweet that, then, smartypants? 2. What – you, like, don’t have a smart phone?) Technological disparity aside, #FMFE09 got off to a good start. The calibre of the speakers proved to be high overall, with Conny Kalcher (LEGO) and Forrester’s own Lisa Bradner (@lisabradner) being particular highlights for me.

EMC Consulting’s Paul Dawson (@poleydee) was on fine form, and his presentation software was the hot topic of the entire event for most of day two. I was genuinely impressed and fired up by Starbucks’ social media efforts and achievements with Alex Wheeler (@aewheeler) at the helm. Simon (@simonru) did Toyota proud, with the augmented reality video getting a positive reaction on Twitter from Forrester’s Nate Elliott (@nate_elliott, also a great speaker), among others.

The themes of orchestration, ‘joining the dots’, personas, the new/old Four Ps and the media meltdown recurred throughout (as did cutesy pictures of people’s daughters). What did I take away, apart from a free EMC bag and the express intention of mixing Vegemite and cream cheese as soon as the opportunity arose? That, to quote Lisa Bradner, ‘the whole notion of managing brands is becoming untenable’. iFood For Thought 2.0.

Other links:

Forrester on Twitter: http://twitter.com/forrester

Toyota’s ‘Today / Tomorrow’ blog: http://blog.toyota.co.uk

The Toyota blog on Twitter: http://twitter.com/ToyotaGB

We’ve all heard the old phrase, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” Well, if you think that’s true, how much do you think a video is worth? According to Jeannie Piekos and Jeff Sylevestre of Blue Moon, the value of video for those in the nonprofit sector is potentially priceless.

I recently attended a session about online video presented by Jeannie and Jeff at the MCN/MCF Joint Annual Conference. The following entry is a combo of some of the choice teachings I brought back from their session, as well as some of my own research on the unique advantages of using online video to communicate to your audiences.

The Bad News: You’ve Got 5 Seconds to Make Your Case
Did you know that it takes just five seconds for a new visitor to decide whether or not they will stay on your website? Forget about giving someone your elevator speech, five seconds is barely enough time for a “Hello.”

Now Here’s the Good News
If you can get them to click “play,” five seconds is all you need. Data show that video can help you improve the likelihood that people who land on your organization’s homepage will take the time to acquaint themselves with who you are and what you do.

Fifty to eighty percent of new visitors who land on a homepage will click on a video first before doing anything else. Research from eMarketer shows that individuals who click on a video tend to stay around longer to watch the video and are more likely to engage in activities such as purchasing a product (or making a donation).

It Doesn’t Have to Be Perfect to Stick
My favorite mantra of tech expert Guy Kawasaki is, “Don’t worry, be crappy.” A tad crass, but it’s a message worth bearing in mind when you’re considering online video for your nonprofit or foundation. Online viewers do not expect HD-quality video from you; what they’re looking for is an emotional connection with your organization’s mission (I’ll explore this more in a second).

With the accessibility of digital cameras and camcorders, and simple editing programs like Windows MovieMaker and iMovie, you (or an intrepid intern) can produce your own video inexpensively. It doesn’t have to be long either; industry opinion pegs the best length for online video to be between 30 seconds and 2 minutes. YouTube also makes engaging users who are hard-of-hearing, deaf, or ESL speakers easy with their closed caption feature.

Make Those Heart Strings Sing
Getting people to stay on your website long enough to learn about your organization is just the tip of the iceberg. Another key benefit that should not be downplayed is the power of video to create an emotional connection with your mission.

I recently attended a webinar where Dr. Paul Slovic, a Ph.D. psychologist and expert in decision making, discussed research findings that show that the best way to persuade a donor to give is to create a sense of one-on-one emotional engagement between the donor and your constituent.

Next to meeting face-to-face, video is one of the best ways to create that sense of sympathy. As Jeannie said at the conference, “Video has the power to humanize and globalize your constituents’ lives.”

And Then There’s SEO
Finally, if you’re looking to improve the search engine optimization (SEO) of your organization’s website (who isn’t?), research from Forrester has shown that using keywords to properly tag your video (something that YouTube and other services allow you to do easily) can help you bump your page ranking on search engines like Google.

So What Are You Waiting For?
A few good examples for inspiration, perhaps? Jeannie was nice enough to send me some examples of nonprofits and grantmakers who are using video to engage with their stakeholders. Here’s a selection of links she sent me, as well as links suggested by folks who commented on this post:

Grantmakers

• “Kathryn T. McCarty,” Cal State, Fullerton Philanthropic Foundation
• “Philanthropy: A Powerful Tool for NEA Affiliates,” The NEA Foundation
• “Philanthropy is… ,” MCF, The Minneapolis Foundation and The Saint Paul Foundation

Nonprofits

• “As a Homeless Teen, Jennifer Fought for Survival,” Lutheran Social Services Minnesota – The Center for Changing Lives
• “Hansel & Gretel Dress Rehearsal,” Kentucky Opera Blog
• “Tahlia’s Story,” Green for All

Join the conversation: Have you used video as a tool to market your organization’s mission or to communicate about a particular cause or campaign? We’d love to hear about it. Please share your experiences in the comments below.

- Cary Lenore Walski, MCF web communications associate

I, along with 1199 others, attended Internet Summit 09 in Raleigh two weeks ago.  I spent an entire day roaming dimly-lit, cold rooms filled with information-hungry (and for some of us just plain hungry) audience members listening to panel after panel discussion on relevant, hip, state-of-the-moment current events.  

I have been writing MarketingSmack now for almost a year and can count on a couple hundred reads each time around.  Secretly, and I guess now not so secretly, I have been wondering how to reach a larger audience.  Towards the end of a session on blogging, I raised the question.  Why not?  Here was a sofa full of the likes of Andy Beal and Rick Klau. 

“If someone had a blog and wanted to generate a larger readership, what would you recommend?” I asked from the front table.  Immediately someone retorted “Who is this blogger—you?”  “Ahhh, a friend” was my not-so-quick-witted reply.  Well, they were very generous to my ‘friend’ with advice –

1. blog MUCH more frequently

2. the audience might just be the right size

3. become more involved and participatory in fellow blogger’s worlds.

So, here it is a couple of weeks later and I can’t seem to muster the nerve to bombard my audience with more than a weekly blog.  I know I’m witty and clever but geez what could I possibly have to impart that requires blogging MULTIPLE times – dare I say someone suggested 10 to 20 times per week?  Is it a black and white situation?  If you don’t blog that prolifically you won’t gain a significant audience? 

Then there’s the idea that my audience size is Goldilocks ‘just right’.  Again, I am confused.  Don’t I want my brand in front of as many as possible?  Yes, I do understand that it needs to be the right people but there is something to be said about critical mass and finding atypical, out of the ordinary applications for your product or services.

And, finally the concept of gaining exposure by participating in the world of other’s online adventure.  In a short five minutes I became a believer of this one.  Reading Marketing Pilgrim, I stumbled upon an excerpt of an interesting paper on “US Interactive Marketing Forecast by Industry, 2009-2014″ by Forrester and retweeted it – within five minutes (and I am not exaggerating) I received an email from Forrester letting me know they were ‘Following Me’. 

Thanks Guys.

So, here I sit mulling over the numerous strands of advice and wonder what has legs – what is relevant beyond the pushing of Smack?  Out of the three, I think genuine interest in what other’s are espousing and lending a hand in spreading their message resonates – in a ‘pay it forward’ type way.

While it never hurts to have expert advice, what really matters is what you all think.  Let me have it – never too late.  MarketingSmack can be found at www.marketingsmack.wordpress.com or visit us at www.summitstrategypartners.com.

Here’s the agenda for today’s Forum –action packed as usual… and with the proverbial curry at the end!

Agenda
1500-1530   Social media tutorial
1545-1600   Registration
1600-1605   Introductions and welcome
1605-1620   Report back from Gartner Symposium
1620-1655   Discussion groups:
- AR and social media
- Planning for 2010
- Gaining and maintaining executive support for AR
1655-1715 Discussion groups report back
1715-1730 Break
1730-1830 Guest speaker: Brad Holmes, VP Technology Research at Forrester Research
1830 p.m. Close of meeting and informal dinner

I recently finished reading Groundswell, a book by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research. I read Marketing in the Groundswell this past summer, which is essentially part two of Groundswell. I recommend reading the latter. Here are my highlights from this book as they relate to arts organizations:

• Forrester defines the “groundswell” as a social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations. “Social technologies have revved up that word-of-mouth dynamic, increasing the influence of regular people while diluting the value of traditional marketing.” What implications does the “groundswell” have for arts organizations? For starters, arts marketers should aim to cultivate online audiences and inspire them to spread the word about their organization.
• The “groundswell” has shifted the balance of power. Arts institutions cannot ignore this trend and need to embrace new digital technologies to remain relevant to the majority of audiences today. Forrester believes that companies that focus on understanding the “groundswell” can learn to work within it and achieve great success.
• Some interesting figures: 29 percent of Americans watch user-generated videos. 1 in 4 Americans are reading blogs. 1 in 4 online American adults visit social networking sites at least monthly, and 22 percent of teenagers check in daily. 25 percent of Americans read ratings and reviews at least monthly. What do these statistics mean to arts organizations? Arts marketers should create a company blog, if they haven’t already, and should post video content frequently. Also, social networking is on the rise and arts marketers should tap into sites that their audiences are already a part of.
• Forrester has created the Social Technographics Ladder, which I mentioned in one of my earlier posts. Each step of the ladder identifies a group of people who are more involved in the “groundswell”, starting with inactives and ending with creators. Arts organizations can use Forrester’s Consumer Profile Tool to gain tailored information about their audiences’ online habits.
• Before launching a new digital marketing project arts organizations should answer the following questions: What are your audiences ready for? What are your goals? How do you want relationships with your audiences to change? What applications should you build?
• Forrester identifies five primary objectives that companies should consider before joining the “groundswell”, and advises companies to focus one of the following: listening, talking, energizing, supporting, or embracing.
• To profit from listening, arts organizations need to plan to act on what they learn.
• Forrester suggests the following techniques for talking with the groundswell: post a viral video, engage in social networks and user-generated content sites, join the blogosphere, or create a community.
• The key to succeeding in social networks is to help people spread your message and to measure the result. Arts marketers can apply for a Google Grant, which awards free AdWords to various philanthropic endeavors.
• Arts organizations should measure the level of audience engagement – how far down the marketing funnel your audience member has traveled.
• Energizing the “groundswell” means tapping into the power of word of mouth by connecting with, and inspiring art patrons. “Word of mouth is a powerful amplifier of brand marketing, achieving results no media campaign can achieve.”  Arts marketers should aim to cultivate relationships with people who are passionate about their cause.

What does the future of the “groundswell” look like according to Forrester? The “groundswell” will be rooted within every activity, not just on computers, but also on mobile devices. Recently, we have seen a surge in mobile phone applications. Also, participation among more people and companies is increasing rapidly. Forrester cautions that companies that aren’t wired into the “groundswell” in 2012 will look out of touch. What does the future of digital media look like to you?

In a seminal work titled “How the questions shape the answers” published in American Psychologist (1999), Norbert Schwarz describes how responses are influenced by question wordings, format and context. Schwarz writes,

“Self reports a fallible source of data and minor changes in question wording, question format or question context can result in major changes in the obtained results”

This is especially a more pronounced problem when it comes to survey questions that ask customers for their willingness to pay (WTP) for a product. When you directly ask a customer questions like:

1. will you buy this product at  10?
2. how much will you pay for product?  a) $4   b) $8   c) $10   d) $10    e)  $12
3. will you buy this product if this were not offered free any more?

The researcher run the risk of getting answers that are not in any way  a true representation of what the customers will actually do. These kinds of questions assume that customers know how much they value the service and  customers are willing to disclose it. Another flaw in WTP studies is treating customer WTP as a fixed number in the minds of customers while it has been shown to be malleable (Thomas and Menon, Journal of Martket Research, 2006).

I saw a report from Forrester research on US customer WTP for online newpapers.  I admit I have not read the report but only their promotional blog post about it. The report claims 80% are not willing to pay for content From what I read I am not satisfied with study or its methods. The survey question was:

If the Web sites for the newspapers and magazines you read were no longer free, how would to prefer to pay for that content?

1. Wouldn’t access them if I have to pay
2. Subscription access to access all online content
3. Subscription that combined print, web, and mobile device access
4. Individual payment for each article read

The biggest flaw I find is anchoring – the question clearly reminds that the content has been free. The question  was too generic, asking  about newspapers and magazines you read and not about a specific newspaper or magazine. The respondents could be thinking of all newspapers, even those they read occasionally while answering this question.  There were no questions reminding respondents of value they get or to rank the online news sources by importance.   If the question had been,

If your most favorite newspaper cannot financially support the free online access, would you be willing to pay in one of the following ways?

1. Subscription access to access all online content
2. Subscription that combined print, web, and mobile device access
3. Individual payment for each article read
4. Wouldn’t access them if I have to pay

… the results would have completely different.

Based on their survey, Forrester  recommends:

Publishers should continue to offer free, ad-supported products to the 80% of consumers who won’t pay for content online; and

Publishers should offer consumers a choice of multichannel subscriptions, single-channel subscriptions, and micropayments for premium product access.

I do not agree. Even if we assume the 80% number is correct, does providing free provide higher profit than charging?  Do newspapers rally want higher reach (because of the Ad revenue)?

If a newspaper publisher really wants to find customer willingness to pay for content they need to do more targeted study of their readers,  use methods like Conjoint analysis to tease out the segments, how much customers in each value the product and focus on methods that help improve customer reference price before charging for content.

The net is the results are unreliable and Forrester’s recommendations are plain wrong.

Over the past few years, a cadre of “independent” analysts have set up shop and started to speak frankly about the enterprise application vendors, in their blogs and tweets. You know who I’m talking about: Vinnie, of course, and Dennis, and the Enterprise Irregulars, and Brian , and many, many others. These people were really good analysts to begin with–I’ve known them for years–and they have found their more-or-less independent status freeing, so they write the best stuff that is out there.

So if they’ve got a better mousetrap, why is it that the big guys, Forrester and Gartner, just seem to roll on and on, happily enough? Why haven’t they folded, the way the portable CD player did when the iPod came out? In the free market, after all, shouldn’t consumers pick the best quality at the lowest prices?

I got an interesting answer, yesterday, when I attended a talk at Harvard by Marc Flandreau, who is at the Graduate Institute of Development and International Studies, Geneva. Marc is an expert on bad-mouthing, or as we like to say in English, “blackmail.” And he has a fascinating historical explanation of how pay-to-play can emerge in information markets.

Marc’s focus is the wild and woolly bond market in Paris pre-World War I, a market that was deeply affected by the emergence of a free (or at least libel-free) press in France, post 1880. At the time, it was so easy to start and print a newspaper cheaply that a new kind of blackmail emerged. It was, essentially, “Pay us, or we’ll say bad things about you.” The very relaxed libel laws at this time made this a genuine threat, and people (Marc shows) really did make money doing it.

In the financial markets, the threat took the form, “Mr. Russian Government, pay us, or we’ll publish an article saying that you’re losing the then-active Russo-Japanese war.” And, as it turns out, the Russian Government paid up. The records, which were published in the 1930s, show that the government’s expenditure on publicité went up by a factor of two or more during that period, over what would “normally” be expected.

The interesting thing, though, is where the money went. Essentially, a set of what we would now call unscrupulous PR men (possibly, a redundancy, I admit) who took the blackmail money and distributed it among the press.

Now, here is the rub. Most of the money apparently went to the most reputable, most stable, and most expensive financial journals, not to the blackmailers. What these people tried to do with the bribe money was to make blackmail expensive, by “supporting” an alternate, established, reputable forum, which people would look to for authoritative information, and the existence of this forum brought the threat of blackmail from the cheap-sheet vendors down to acceptable levels.

Flandreau demonstrates fairly convincingly that while some money did go to throw-away (sometimes one-issue) newspapers, most of the money went to those journals and was a significant source of income for them.

“So if I may paraphrase,” a Harvard professor said, after hearing this, “The National Enquirer is one of the things that keeps The New York Times alive.” Marc replied in the affirmative.

Marc’s broad conclusion is that a pay-to-play industry will emerge whenever there is a significant threat from “badmouthing.” (He cites Moody’s as a modern-day example of the same phenomenon.) In all these cases (I think movie stars of the 1920s are another example), the best strategy for coping with badmouthing is to support cooperative, but reputable mouthpieces who will then be a permanent counter to whatever bad things are said by the smaller, less reputable people. In his analysis, the accuracy of what these smaller, less reputable people say is irrelevant; it could be true, it could be false. What matters is that you can exert some control over the best people in the industry.

Anybody who has ever taken a PR class already knows this, of course. But what Flandreau contributes are two simple, but odd facts. The premiums are in fact very large, and MOST of the money goes to the larger, more reputable firms.

So what does this mean for Dennis and Vinnie and Brian and Michael Krigsman and Helmuth Gümbel? Well, pretty much it means that their efforts are enriching Gartner and Forrester far more than it enriches them.

Dennis says in a recent tweet, “Pay to play doesn’t cut it.” Sorry Dennis, in this case you’re just wrong. If Marc is right (and I have no reason to think he isn’t), what you’re really doing is supporting the pay-to-play industry.

I read a very good and insightful article in today’s Adage, “Why Digital Agencies are Indeed Ready to Lead” by Jacques-Herve Roubert. I agree with his contention that Digital agencies are indeed ready to lead and as he points out, our company, Ascentium, is demonstrating that in fact with our relationship with Precor, but also increasingly so with some of our other accounts who are looking for to us for ideas and strategy and their traditional agencies for mass advertising.

The reasons for this are many and you pointed out some really good ones regarding where the energy, ideas and innovation is coming from. But the basic underlying reason is rooted in the business model of the big traditional agencies more than anything else. The traditional business model is based on revenue streams from media, not direct billable hours. This means that to be successful, agencies were forced into thinking about media as the prime distribution channel because that is how they make money. Digital agencies are not boxed in that way and as a result, they are able to look more broadly across channels and take a more customer-centric approach to communication than a media or product based approach.

Devotion to gathering customer intelligence across multiple channels online, offline and emerging social channels and then applying that to create customer experiences which produce trackable and measureable results is the key to our success at Ascentium and I believe that same can be said for the other great emerging digital agencies cired as well, like AKQA and TribalDDB. The big agencies are saddled with the innovator’s dilemma and while it won’t be the end of them, it certainly erects a big speed bump to innovation.

You read the headline correctly; Forrester and Gartner should never be considered Tier 1. Yes, yes, Gartner is the industry behemoth and Forrester is likely the number two firm for enterprise end users, but that does not make them automatically Tier 1 for the purpose of creating a ranked and tiered analyst list. 

In the analyst list methodology that SageCircle has developed, analyst firms should not be given an automatic “tier” because what should be ranked is analysts, not firms. Ranking should be done based on a set of criteria (e.g., industry visibility, research coverage, client base, and so on) related to the vendor’s and AR team’s objectives. After a ranked list is created, then AR draws lines on the list to split the list into groups (e.g., Tier 1, 2 and 3, or strategic, important, and secondary or whatever you want to call them) that will define the types the service level (e.g., 1-to-1, 1-to-many or none-to-many responses) the AR team will give each analyst on the list. Tiers and service levels are created based on AR resources (i.e., the bigger the AR team the more Tier 1 analysts can be supported). While the characteristics of the firm will contribute to the data for ranking, merely working at Forrester or Gartner should never guarantee an analyst that they will have Tier 1 status.

SageCircle strategists frequently see analyst relations (AR) teams give Tier 1 status to analysts of the Big Two, even if their true relevance should place them much farther down on the ranked list. This can lead to AR misallocating resources by putting too much emphasis on some analysts while not having sufficient resources to brief or respond to other analysts. Remember, depending on the market and the analysts, a single practitioner or boutique can have just as much influence as the Big Two.

SageCircle Technique:

• Develop (or use SageCircle’s) analyst list management methodology that uses a mix of weighted criteria
• Work with your internal stakeholders to set the criteria and weights as well as obtain buy-in for the final ranked list
• Set service levels based on AR resources
• Be disciplined – but diplomatic – about adhering to service levels even when you are directly contacted by lower ranked analysts

Bottom Line: Few if any AR teams have the unlimited resources required to support every request from every analyst. AR needs to develop a methodology for ranking analysts based on relevance to the company’s objectives. Then AR needs to split the ranked list into groups with the sizes of the groups based on the resources AR has available. Finally, AR needs to ensure that its internal stakeholders are in agreement with the ranking methodology and service level framework so that AR will not have problems adhering to the service levels when an analyst calls an executive to complain about their treatment.

Question: AR – How do you rank and tier your analyst list?

Vendor AR teams find it useful to understand the size and nature of an analyst firm’s clients when they are trying to decide if that firm has direct influence on their sales. Analyst firms whose clients are primarily vendors have little direct impact on sales deals because they are not advising IT managers and other technology buyers. Those firms with a significant contract value with enterprises can have a dramatic impact on sales especially through ad hoc, phone-based inquiry (see Don’t discount the business value of analysts’ 350,000+ phone-based inquiries with end-user clients) and signature product or market research (e.g., Magic Quadrant and Wave).

In its SEC Form 10-Q, Forrester Research provided some details into its client base. While not perfectly transparent, it does provide interesting insights. The filing reports the revenue breakdown by the three Client Groups, which have their own dedicated sales and analyst teams. There is also an “Other” category which consists “primarily of sponsorships and event tickets.” The “Other” category makes the percentages fluxuate quarter-to-quarter depending on the number of events that occur in the quarter.

As the table illustrates, roughly 40% of its revenues in the first three quarters came from its IT Client Group, which SageCircle interprets as “end users” at enterprises. This is a critical community for many technology and telecommunications vendors as these are often the primary buyers of technology, especially IT infrastructure (e.g., servers, storage, systems integration consulting, enterprise applications, et cetera).

The roughly 29% for the TI Client Group, focused on vendors, represent analysts who primarily advise vendors –although they can advise end users through so-called courtesy views and inquiries – and thus do not have a direct impact on active sales deals. The “Other” segment, the events business, does not have an analyst team so it does not have a direct impact on active sales deals.

So does this mean less than half of Forrester’s clients are those prime IT buyers that vendors prize? Not necessarily.

The M&S Client Group, which is focused on marketing professionals, has as part of its mission “Objective advice on which tools and technologies will best connect you to customers” (from Forrester’s website). This particular focus should interest vendors as it implies that at least some of the M&S analysts have a direct impact of sales deals. Unfortunately, Forrester does not provide guidance on how much of the M&S Client Group analyst team’s time is spent influencing technology product purchases versus providing “Data-driven insights” on “changing consumer behavior” using Consumer Technographics® survey data. So some percentage of M&S’ roughly 27% can be associated with clients who buy IT and telecommunications products, software, and related services for marketing purposes.

Assuming that Forrester’s total business with IT buyers is about 50% and with Forrester’s full year 2009 guidance of $220m to $233m, we estimate that Forrester’s “end user”-like client business is approximately one-seventh that of Gartner’s end-user business. This interpretation of the earnings data might come as a surprise to those vendors who perceive that Forrester is much more of a peer of Gartner. What this exercise illustrates is that perceptions can be wrong and depend a lot on the market space of the vendor.  

Broader Lessons

AR professionals need to peel the onion to get the data they need to make important analyst list ranking decisions and understand what is important is the measure of influence of the individual analyst in their market space regardless of the firm. Not even Gartner wields significant influence across all the IT landscape. In some situations, boutique analyst firms and single practitioners can have more relevant visibility or influence than the largest firms.

Related post: Forrester Research Q2 2009 earnings

SageCircle Technique:

• AR should review assumptions about any analyst firm’s size in the analyst ranking and tiering framework used to create analyst lists
• AR should inquire with their Sales colleagues to see if the number of prospects and customers mentioning Forrester research is shrinking, growing, or staying the same.  This will help determine Forrester’s continuing ability to influence vendor sales

Bottom Line: While Forrester is clearly the number two advisory firm in terms of total number of end-user clients, it should not be assumed that its reach is as great as market behemoth Gartner. AR needs to take a fact based approach when making decisions about allocating resources for outreach activities.

Question: AR – What was your perception about the relative size of Forrester’s end-user client base versus Gartner’s?

Broadband growth in the U.S. has slowed considerably in the last two years and future growth for online access technologies will come less from people adopting broadband for the first time and more from people upgrading from one technology to another, according to a report out today from Forrester. In addition to new technologies, Americans will also see speed boosts — even those on the slower service tiers — as providers attempt to offer more value on the low end rather than lower prices.

For many, the elimination of the 768 kbps or 1.5 Mbps connection options will go unnoticed, but for those that really only use email, a price decrease for barely broadband speeds will be welcome indeed — it could even spur a few laggards holding out on broadband because of pricing to step up. However, the big takeaway of the report is that most of the U.S. — at 80.9 million homes — has some access to broadband, and that such access will continue to improve.

When it comes to ISPs, subscriber growth will only help drive sales through the next two years; after that, revenue growth will have to come from new technologies, services and pricing schemes. Cable companies so far are winning, with 45 percent of homes expected to be subscribing to cable broadband by the end of 2009, but fiber to the home will make the most gains over the next five years, by which time it’s projected to grow to account for 10 percent of all access technologies from just 4 percent. And during that time, alternative wireless technologies aren’t forecast to be competitive to cable, fiber or even DSL.

While the speed boosts are welcome, I think the report needs to spend more time discussing how to make broadband access a differentiated service, beyond price and bundles. It recommends that providers focus their competitive strategies less on a bundle and more on  access to online storage, TV Everywhere and in-home entertainment that require higher speeds, and help keep subscribers from switching. The irony, of course, is that such high-bandwidth applications are apparently the same ones leading providers to cry uncle under an onslaught of heavy usage.

The AR podcast is a review of the latest news and trends in the analyst ecosystem along with tips and tricks for analyst relations professionals and analyst research consumers. SageCircle strategists Dave Eckert and Carter Lusher co-host this bi-weekly program. You can find all the SageCircle podcasts on our podcast page.

Visit the podcast page to download the MP3 file or listen to the episodes on your computer.  Click here to subscribe to the podcast within iTunes

SCP 12: Table of contents. Numbers in parentheses refer to minutes:seconds when the article starts within the podcast.

[00:00] Opening

[00:57] News – Forrester’s and Gartner’s 3Q 2009 Earnings Announcements

[07:41] Growing enterprise client base enhances influence and relevance

[10:40] AR-Sales Case Study – Countering a negative research note

[15:16] 2010 Planning Tips

[21:22] Upcoming Events

[22:45] Closing

Our goals for the AR Community Podcast are two-fold. The first goal is to provide an additional venue for SageCircle research that complements our existing deliverables, whether free (e.g., SageCircle blog) or client only (e.g., the Online SageContent Library, the largest and premier repository of AR best practices and downloadable tools available in the industry). The second goal is to develop real-world podcasting skills so when our clients are considering their own podcasts we have the experience (and scar tissue) to help them start podcasting without having to re-invent the wheel.

03.11.2009

Jo, que mes de ajetreo!!!  Noviembre nos va a dejar un volumen ingente de información y presencias destacadas. Tenemos Ficod, Inspirational Live, V Congreso Internacional de Educared, EBE, el evento “Mobile Marketing, a strategic imperative” de Forrester, la Semana de la Ciencia o  el quinto aniversario de Fundetec.

Citas repletas de charlas, conferencias, talleres y también de encuentros con clientes, colegas y amigos. Personalmente agradezco estos foros, entornos reales (off line!!) donde las conversaciones, dentro del tono especialista, son distendidas y nos permiten conocer  la dimensión humana de personas a las que sólo conocemos desde el ámbito comercial o virtual.

Y…. en todos estos eventos, el fenómeno Social Media es, de una u otra forma, protagonista.

Me cuenta Gaby Castellanos que el jueves 5  está el Foro Mad09 en el IMAX de Madrid. A las 13.30 hay una mesa redonda “Redes Sociales y Social Media” con Diego Oliva (Facebook) , Gaby Castellanos (Sr Burns) e Ícaro Moyano (Tuenti).

El día 11 estaré en un taller de Fundación Telefónica sobre herramientas colaborativas que imparte la U. Carlos III dentro de la Semana de la Ciencia. A ver….

FICOD

El miércoles 18 lo pasaré en Ficod (Por cierto, ya os podéis descragar el programa definitivo) (Madrid, 17, 18 y 19 ), tengo especial interés por las ponencias en torno a :

• 12.30h: “Medios y redes sociales: el móvil como espacio privilegiado para la participación y la comunicación”. Ponentes: Pablo Barallat (Vodafone), Iñaki Amate (Fjord) , Alberto Tognazzi (MovilFilm Festival), Fernando González Mesonero (Buongiomo).
• 15.30 h:  “Reputación on-line de las marcas”, ponentes: Ismael El Qudsi (Havas Digital), Julio Alonso (Weblog SL) Victor Puig (Overalia), Fernando Maciá (Human Level Comminications) Genis Roca (RocaSalvatella).
• 18.00 h: “La Web 2.0 y sus implicaciones con los derechos de propiedad intelectual”. Ponentes: Andy Ramos(abogado) , Raquel Xalabarder (UOC), Barbara Navarro (Google) Ignaci Labastida (Creative Commoms) Miguel Jaque (CENATIC), Manuel Tolmos (Escrow) y Javier Prenafeta (abogado)
•  19.00 h:  ”Contenidos digitales para el ámbito educativo”. Juan Tomás Martín (Wikisaber), Lucía Vargas (IECISA), José Moyano (ANELE), José Luís García Belderraín (Cambrige University Press)

Fundetec

El jueves 12 es el V aniversario de Fundetec. Allí estaré para felicitar a Alfonso Arbaiza y su equipo que, por cierto, ha cambiado mucho desde los inicios.

EBE

El 13 de noviembre comienza EBE (Evento Blog España) se celebra en Sevilla hasta el 15 de noviembre. Si alguien, de repente, quiere asistir que se olvide, la inscripción está cerrada desde hace semanas!! Hablarán, entre otros, Koro Castellanos de Tuenti, Ana María Llopis (Ideas4all) (Llopis contó su proyecto empresarial en el último First Tuesday en Madrid dedicado a mujeres emprendedoras en la Red, interesante) , David Karp  de Tumblr .  Ahh también estará José Antonio Gallego (AERCO) moderando una mesa redonda.

Best Relations

El martes 24 de noviembre, a las 19.00h Best Relations  presenta el juego de mesa, Party & Co de la comunicación y los medios sociales. No puedo faltar, he quedado con Ignasi Vendrell.

Inspirational Live

Festival de Publicidad Interactiva,  se celebra los días 25 y 26 en el Círculo de Bellas Artes de Madrid., podéis ver un post al respecto. Lástima no poder asistir!!

 Mobile Marketing

El  25 de noviembre en las instalaciones de Telefónica en Distrito C (donde trabajo!!) se celebra el evento “Mobile Marketing, a strategic imperative” organizado por Forrester Research, la Mobile Marketing Association y Telefónica.

• El analista de Forrester, Thomas Husson  dará una charla titulada  “Making the Most of Mobile Now and in the Coming Years”.
• Salvador Carrillo, Presidente de MMA España and CEO of Mobile Dreams Factory, hablará de  “El marketing y la publicidad móvil en España” . Situación actual y perspectivas de futuro.
• Enrique Burgos, dará la charla “El móvil como herramienta de fidelización de clientes”.
• Susana Rodríguez Urgel, On-Line Channels and Mobile Commerce Manager, cerrará la jornada con una exposición sobre “Mobile Marketing: una REALIDAD para Telefónica”.

 Congreso Educared

Desde el jueves 26 hasta el 28. Hay ponencias muy interesantes pero quiero  destacar:

• Día 27 11.00h. Debate  Redes Sociales Educativas. Bernardo Hernández (Director de marketing de producto Google). Zaryn Dentzel (Creador de Tuenti)
• Día 27, 12.30h . Horizontes de la Innovación: Hacia una nueva Internet Educativa para la Generación en Red. Exposición y debate. Jane McGonigal (Directora de investigación y desarrollo de juegos. Institute for the Future). Alejandro Piscitelli (Autor de “Nativos digitales”) . Nelson Pretto (Profesor Asociado Faculdade de Educação da UFBA).

De todo lo vea, oiga y haga…os contaré lo que pueda.

Ahhh!!! y además tengo reuniones con clientes, propuestas, etc, etc, etc…

In occasione del Forrester Consumer Forum 2009 sono stati annunciati i vincitori dei Groundswell Awards 2009, i premi assegnati alle applicazioni tecnologiche più efficaci in ambito “social”, divise secondo queste categorie:

LISTENING. Find out what customers are really saying in order to understand them better.
TALKING. Spread messages about a company.
ENERGIZING. Get a company’s best customers to evangelize its products.
SPREADING. Get customers or users within a company to encourage others to adopt a product or service. (B2B only.)
SUPPORTING. Help customers support each other to solve each other’s problems.
EMBRACING. Integrate customers into the way a business works, including using their help to design products and improve processes.
MANAGING. Empower employees and managers within an organization.
SOCIAL IMPACT. Improve society with non-commercial applications.

If you in the Bay Area on Thursday November 5, make sure you take some time in the afternoon to attend the Product Management Open House at Forrester Research in Foster City.

Location: Forrester Research HQ
Address: 950 Tower Lane, Suite 1200, Foster City
Time: 4:00 to 5:30 PM

More details can be found here.

Kindly RSVP  Marsha Versen (mversen@forrester.com, 650.581.3851) if you are interested in attending.

If you have questions about the event, please contact Tom Grant (tgrant@forrester.com, 650.581.3846).

I honestly miss being in the Bay Area because of the numerous events like this one. They’re great for meeting new people or connecting with old friends.

Tom, I hope you have a successful Open House. Make sure you take some pictures and post them on your blog in the near future.

Saeed